Friday, July 20

Eat Less Exercise More: Does It Work?

Eat less and exercise more to lose weight.

How is this working for you? The fact is that when you restrict calories (eat less) you get hungry! Have you tried it? What happens? If you’re like most people you can probably manage your hunger for a couple of weeks even months but it then becomes a test of endurance and we can tell you who will win out in the end…..Hunger will make sticking to your new regime almost impossible and not only that, hormonal imbalance will drive “overeating and weight gain” once the restriction has gone. Why?

Our bodies have built in something we call a 'set point
weight'. This is a survival instinct
brought about during periods of limited resource, stress or starvation. during these times the body does all it can
to maintain what it had set as your 'set weight point' . If you force the body
beyond this point it remembers where it was before you put it under stress,
when your dieting stops the body stores as much fat as it can to return the
known set point. However the bodies set point weight only works in one
direction, this is up, it has no limit on gaining weight and is quite happy to
to store more and more fat for future periods of lack.

Both calorie restriction along with willpower and exercise
cause stress which should be avoided. You are
far more likely to succeed and achieve the weight loss you desire when you are
not stressed. When stressed the Adrenal glands produce cortisol. Elevated
levels of cortisol result in the body going into preserve mode and weight loss
stalls. In addition stress hormones are produced which in turn increases
glucose levels, which leads to increased insulin production, weight gain and a
whole host of other potential health related issues, including diabetes,
syndrome x, heart disease Etcetera. The evidence against using exercise as a
weight loss tool is huge, one should not be used to enable or enhance the
other, always address excess weight issues before fitness. Remember diet is the
key to your weight loss goals and exercise is a fitness tool.

"Reduced fat and calorie intake and frequent use of low
calorie food products have been associated with a paradoxial increase in the
prevalence of obesity" - Drs Heini & Weinsier

Let’s take another look at the Minnesota Experiment. This study was conducted 60 years ago and was
an effort to assess the effects of starvation on the human body as well as how
best to re-nourish it. Sound
familiar? It should do because this is
what you are doing to your body every time you embark on anther fad diet or
weight loss programme…In the final phase of this 56 week long experiment, the
36 male volunteers were given an unrestricted rehabilitation period lasting 8
weeks for re-nourishment following a programme of restricted eating. What happened? Left to their own devices they ate huge
quantities of food! Eating more than
4000 calories a day for several weeks driven by a strong desire to overeat…The
experiment noted that the “extreme” eating was directly related to the extent
of weight lost: the more weight an individual lost, the more the drive to over
eat and to such an extent that by the time eating returned to normal, fat
levels were 75% higher than at the start of the study.

So why do we keep doing it?
If your aim is to lose weight and to keep it off in the long-term you
must embrace a way of eating that keeps you satisfied and that can keep your
hunger at bay. Think diet not dieting and what Paleo will do for you! You must
place your emphasis on eating nutrient dense truly satisfying food and become
familiar with those foods that will do this for you….and here’s a clue, it’s
not carbohydrates!

This is a great post in the fact that people need to learn that you cannot starve yourself and expect to have the energy to exercise and be well. It may be a quick fix, but in the long run it will cause you to crash and burn and gain everything back that you tried to lose, as you mention in your article.

However, I do think it is important to acknowledge that weight-loss and maintenence is very much a balance of calories in and calories out, so people should educate themselves on the right number of calories for their bodies and activity level.

Thank you for your comment it is much appreciated. However your last point is misleading at best and contradictory. It is these misconceptions that are the root cause of the present situation with obesity and syndrome X we have in today's modern societies. The energy in energy out hypothesis as you describe when applied to humans or animals for that matter is totally irrelevant. It is based on the laws of thermodynamics and calorific values, which are fine in mathematics and physics but not so in biology which includes the human biochemistry. There are four major flaws in this theory though without going into all of them, I would point out that our bodies simply don't burn calories in the same way as a calorimeter does. Once this point is acknowledged all other bets are effectively off.

So glad I found your blog. Filled with tons of knowledge and insight. I can completely agree where you are coming from. When I was pregnancy with my daughter I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and was forced to alter my diet. I found that it was the best change I could have ever made. I felt the best I had ever felt not eating sugar. I look forward to learning more.

Thanks for the like :)...on my grapefruit poppy seed bread! obviously not part of the paleo diet :)

[...] sugar instability is an issue. When blood sugar levels drop, our bodies respond by secreting stress hormones – like adrenaline (the fight or flight hormone) and one side effect of this is increased [...]

[...] Walk 20 minutes a day and avoid all elevators and stairs? Of course the only reason for this is to make the diet work and get results faster, which is totally the wrong approach. Firstly remember exercise is a fitness tool and although it has several benefits including social interaction and may also be used by professional athletes to make the grade, it has no place in weight loss for the man or woman in the street. If you are several pounds (or even stones) overweight, just moving around is all the exercise you need worry about. Think diet as your weight loss tool. Eating the right foods is all you need to do to achieve almost effortless weight loss. Remember exercise less, eat more (of the right foods) rather than eat less exercise more. [...]

As a real world example that this is true, I once started at 100 kg and lost 25 kg in around 4 months by exercising for 4 hours a day and eating one meal a day. First, this is not a very nice way to live. Second, I returned to eating “normally” and slowly gained weight over about a 10 year period. I ended up at 115 kg. So much for ‘set point weight’ because I went way past my old weight.

I have now made a lifestyle choice that involves eating plenty of whole foods and very little processed foods and exercising a little every day. I like my new lifestyle and as a result of it, my fitness is slowly improving and my weight is slowly decreasing. This is not a diet because there is no end point. This is how I live now (http://is.gd/84zmE9).

I have not found that ‘set point weight’ if you choose to live a ‘paleo’ lifestyle. I am 22 kg lighter than my maximum weight and there is not way my body is trying to get back to that old weight. I’m simply not hungry because I eat well and keep my body fuelled.

[...] needing to lose weight or just desiring to be a little leaner, the advice is the same. Eat less, exercise more! Simple,, right? Well it seems not and looks like we’ve all been pretty well brain washed by [...]

My husband was tired of feeling just unwell, and unhealthy. He has spent the last year on the Paleo diet and it has changed him. He has lost his unwanted weight, and improved his overall health. It is simply sad that government guidelines, and market trends so often dictate 'advice'. Then the consequences are shrugged off, or blamed on something else.

Looking for something?

Paleo Twitter

Mike: The Knowledge (Oliver)

paleo...works!

Why We (Really) Get Fat!

Take a look at this little gem explaining a key fundamental fact of which most of you will be unaware. That is the truth about why we really get fat.

Eatwell Plate

Healthy eating? Sadly large parts of the NHS eatwell plate are anything but.

State Of The Nation

Despite official advice, things like the Change 4 Life scheme,eatwell plate and NHS guidelines. Obesity in the UK is on the increase along with diseases like Diabetes at epidemic proportions.

Why is this? Is there a solution?

Standard advice is to eat less and exercise more. Can this be right? Well it's not worked to date so what do you think. Not just here in the UK either, globally the advice is much the same and yet present figures show we are at pandemic levels around the world.